


Begin Again

by capn666



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Based on a song, F/M, Fluff, One Shot, SO MUCH FLUFF, coffee shop AU, new relationships, pure fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-19 01:14:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20648789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capn666/pseuds/capn666
Summary: "And you throw your head back laughing like a little kidI think it's strange that you think I'm funny 'cause he never did"(Begin Again, Taylor Swift)All endings offer new beginnings and that's what Jake may be for Amy.





	Begin Again

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the song Begin Again, by Taylor Swift.  
This was a request from user AAVasconcelo
> 
> I wasn't going to write this but I was up til 1am writing it and it's 5am and I'm leaving for work and I slept an hour but here I am, writing this work and publishing it because I've already lost control of my life, I may well get validation for it.
> 
> **updated version from the error-filled one I posted at 1am

Amy takes in a deep breath, eyes drawing over the drab attire in her closet. She pulls out the button-ups and skirts, all light colors, all prim and proper. All of them uniforms. She begins pulling them on before she even realizes she’s doing it. She stares at herself in the full-length mirror, doesn’t like the person she sees there.

The dim morning light barely makes it into the room, light enough that she can see but still too dark to tell if any of it is real.

He would’ve liked this outfit. The light colors. The slim-straight, perfectly ironed blouse and matching black skirt. It’s what he liked her in.

Her eye is caught on a shirt at the back of her closet. Hardly used, the red shirt hung behind the rest of her wardrobe. It was bright and loud and hung off her shoulders, all things he told her he hated. She pulls it on, ignoring the pencil skirts for a disused pair of slim pants.

She tosses a book in her purse, reconsiders and grabs a different one. An old favorite. Fantasies and magic and hope. She leaves the house, nothing new but also nothing like she’d been doing. Something like the Before. A little bit of the Next. 

#

It’s not a date. Or maybe it is. It’s not at all important but isn’t it? He’d be late. Or perfectly on time. That’s how it’s supposed to be. Teddy was always by the book, exact. Never a moment lost, exactly on schedule. It’s a routine. A show you repeat over and over, playing the parts. You show up early and you hope they didn’t wait long and you don’t mess up the schedule. That’s how dating is.

She shows up early.

He’s standing with someone, laughing. They’re standing by the door and he’s engaged in the conversation, but his eyes are searching. He’s wearing a suit jacket over what isn’t his regular button up and jeans. It’s casual but he still looks so nice. Nicer than he normally tries for. His eyes are wide when he sees her, searching in the crowd. His hands cross, uncross, cross again in front of him. He says a word to the other person and rushes to her. He’s jumpy and he’s bouncing and his face is wide and bright and smiling.

“Jake. Hi.” She smiles at him, holding back the wide smile she feels would strain her jaw.

“Hey. Hi. How are you doing? Sorry, I don’t know if you’re early too or on time. I got excited thinking about this and didn’t want to mess it up so I got here early and I’ve just been hanging out and waiting.” His smile never falters, his eyes only growing softer. “Not – not that I was waiting too long for you. I would keep waiting for you. I’m just excited to be here with you.”

Teddy had never said anything that sweet to her before, nor that sincere.

“Oh, I’m early, too. Did you want to keep waiting? I can come back in a half hour.” She smiles at him but it twitches, visibly flinching at the attempt at a joke. She didn’t tell jokes. Teddy didn’t understand them. He said they’re a waste of time when you could get right to the point instead. The joke hangs there while she wishes she could take it back, opens her mouth to say as much.

He’s smiling at her and it’s wide and genuine. He laughs and the sound floats off on the winds, clutching her heart with it.

Jake leads her to a table near the window, overlooking the waterfront. Her preferred drink is already there waiting for her and he pulls her chair out before she can even reach it. He stands happy and excited to near bursting, both hands holding the back of her chair. It’s small, such a miniscule action, but she’s glad there’s a chair waiting because she needs to sit down as her breath leaves her just watching him.

#

He’d been working. She had ordered her drink and was reading in the booth in the corner when he brought it out to her. He was so eager to talk with her. She’d never seen someone so excited just to be around her. But his bright eyes and brighter smile took her heart right out of her chest and assured her without words that he was the happiest he had ever been just hovering near her table.

He couldn’t stay for long. He was working and he had to interact with the other guests. He had coffee to pour and snacks to bring around, but his eyes remained glued on her.

Even when he wasn’t around, when her nose was buried in her book, she could feel him watching her. It didn’t feel weird. It didn’t feel unwanted. He didn’t watch her with the same guarded expression but with a curiosity and light that made her feel like it was impossible to stay hidden.

She had watched him from the corner of her eye smiling with the guests, talking and laughing with his friends. She watched it happen but each time he spoke with someone else, his eyes stayed on her and the smile seemed almost like it was only meant for her. He was laughing and saying words for others but the smiles, the smiles were all for her.

He couldn’t stay gone more than a few minutes without returning to ask about a refill or how her mostly forgotten book was going.

#

His smile and his laugh were so pure, so genuine. None of that forced politeness. Not the expected smile you get when you make the usual expected response to an expected comment and they smile expectedly. Niceties, that’s what she realized they’d been playing at. It was never real. Did she and Teddy like each other? Sure. But it was all very polite. It never left that stage, never made it to comfort.

She looked at Jake and knew comfort in the pure, genuine laugh. Knew in his child-like joy and the wonder in his face that this was what it felt like to trust and enjoy the person you’re with.

She hadn’t realized she’d been going through the motions. She hadn’t known it could feel like this. Like joy. Like forgetting the time and the schedules, the routine. Looking back, it was all so stilted, so fragile and boring and endless and uneventful. It was nice enough, sure, but this?

Jake laughed and when he did his head fell back and he was loud and genuine and she felt the colors seep back in to her world of black and white.

Months of routinely scheduled events and she felt it all burst open on one afternoon. Her life had been on pause and someone just hit play and the world around her was fast forwarding to catch up. She didn’t even mind it going by in a blur around her.

It felt new.

It felt like a beginning.

#

“I’ve never felt this comfortable around anyone like this. I feel like I know you.”

He was right. The comfort she waited months for with Teddy, she felt in an afternoon with Jake. They were so different, the two of them. They liked different things, hung around different people, lived different stories. She hasn’t seen every _Die Hard _film despite him calling it a “classic”, and he hadn’t read all of the _Harry Potter_ series. But they met somewhere along the way.

They trade stories and she’s quiet. He asks her questions, prods her with the metaphorical rod and sometimes the physical nudge of an elbow but she stays quiet and he doesn’t force her to come out yet.

Teddy had never wanted her stories.

But Jake reminds her in his mannerisms that he isn’t Teddy. He asks questions. He likes to hear her talk, he says as much. He asks about her day, he tells her about his, about his ideas and his imagined stories built out of boredom during a shift. He tells her about movies. He asks her about books.

Amy spends twenty minutes talking about _Harry Potter._ She starts slow, with a sentence here or there, but then she’s talking and it’s coming out and it doesn’t stop. At first it was the importance of role models for young girls. Then it was the importance of books. Next the importance of magic in real life. In color and mysticisms and hopefulness and belief. She looks into Jake’s eyes and sees it all there in front of her before she even realizes she hasn’t stopped.

“I’m sorry. I’ve been talking a while. I didn’t mean to go on like that. I’ll stop.”

His chin is propped in his folded arms. His eyes are wide and there’s wonderment lost somewhere deep inside them. His smile is wide and his eyes squint up at her from the size of his smile.

“Please don’t. I could listen to you for hours.”

Everything about him is sincere. From the smile to the soft tone of his voice. She doesn’t continue speaking, but she smiles and tucks the hair behind both of her ears.

#

Teddy never laughed out loud. He never did anything spontaneous. He was romantic in a textbook candle-lit dinner way, but this is new. Jake, she could see the stars in his eyes the way he saw them in her entire existence. Looking at him, being with him, she saw the world anew, as though she were a child seeing it for the first time. Everything was new and exciting and brighter. The sky was bluer, his shirt more green, hers more red.

They walk along the Brooklyn Bridge and watch the sun set over the horizon and she’s never seen so many colors.

#

She wants to mention Teddy. Wants to say “this is how it was”. She wants to compare aloud the thoughts ringing in her head, telling her this is all very weird and wrong, that it isn’t how it should be. Teddy was safe and slow. Teddy was routine days on a calendar, but Jake doesn’t even know that today is September. He’s talking about movies and friends and holidays and Christmas and she forgets Teddy.

She looks into Jake’s eyes and sees the stars they could fly through together and she forgets all about Teddy. She doesn’t care about the routine, the calendar, the month. She only wants to hear Jake talk and to know more about him, his life, and who he is.

She forgets Teddy and she forgets time. She wants to live now, not in her memories and the many differences and what was. She wants to be here for what is. Now.

#

“Can I get you anything else?” Jake asks, standing behind the register a week from that first date. “Mints are eight for a dollar. Peanut butter cups are four for a dollar. My phone number is free.”

Amy scrunches up her eye brows, narrows her eyes at him. “I already have your number.”

“Yeah, that’s why it’s free.”

There’s silence. A full moment of dumbfounded, wonderful silence as Amy feels that breath finally release. She laughs and he laughs with her and there’s no one telling her how long or how loud it should be.

Something had ended, she could feel it. She wasn’t sad or sorry for it. Looking at Jake, she could feel something else beginning.


End file.
